Flux to partner with Barclays to offer digital receipts

Flux, the reinventor of the receipt for the 21st century, today announced a trial with Barclays to offer itemised digital receipts to their customers. The upcoming trial will take place with the estimated 10,000 users of the Barclays Launchpad app, the bank’s platform for testing new features with real customers to learn more about how best to meet their needs.

Customers taking part in the trial will see their receipts in real time, including all purchases, with VAT, delivered directly to their Barclays app. Users can take ownership of their financial data by going paperless and keeping track of everything they buy without having to download extra apps or changing any behaviour. Successful pilots are then rolled out to the five million customers using the Barclays Mobile Banking App. Work is progressing on the trial and the pilot will be live as soon as possible. Although Barclays will be Flux’s first Tier One Bank partnership, the start-up has already collaborated with other banks like Starling Bank.

Like contactless, Flux is closely connected to both the issuing and acquiring sides of the bank. In addition to delivering receipts to Barclays customers, this trial also sees Flux partnering with Barclaycard, which helps businesses to accept payments. Barclaycard will provide the ability for merchants, via integration through their point-of-sale devices, to issue digital receipts to any customer from a participating bank who is enrolled into the Flux service. Currently this includes Starling Bank cardholders and Monzo Bank in pilot, who will have receipts sent straight to their mobile banking app. Barclaycard and Flux have now launched across all EAT stores and, should the pilot prove successful, may look to add more retailers next year.

Flux has a UK patent pending algorithm that works by linking purchases to bank cards via a software integration to the retailer’s point of sale. The technology makes the purchase more useful to the customer, gets rid of paper and shortens time at checkout.

Matty Cusden-Ross

Flux was part of the 2017 Barclays Accelerator powered by Techstars, part of Barclays’ core commitment to innovation and technology. This pilot highlights the success of the Barclays Accelerator which has truly created a platform for experimentation to build and test new technologies.

“Through the Group Innovation Office and Rise, our open innovation community, we continue to partner with FinTechs to experiment and test new ideas,” Barclays Group head of innovation Michael Harte said. “We are delighted to be trialling Flux technology as part of our ongoing efforts to improve the experience we offer our customers.”

“We believe that Flux is the next biggest innovation for retail payments since contactless,” Flux cofounder and CEO Matty Cusden-Ross said. “Nobody wants to keep track of hundreds of bits of paper in the 21st century. We are determined to digitise the world’s receipts by linking to how customers pay anyways so we don’t change behavior at checkout. We are excited to demonstrate the benefits of Flux to Barclays customers.”

A two-time LendIt Journalist of the Year nominee and winner in 2018, Tony has written more than 2,000 original articles on the blockchain, peer-to-peer lending, crowdfunding and emerging technologies over the past seven years, making him one of the senior writers in the alt-fi sector.

"The evolution of the crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending scenes is absolutely fascinating to chronicle. It is a joy to be around people with such passion and vision."